A gigantic sonic boom generated by a super-massive black hole has been found with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, along with evidence for a cacophony of deep sound. This discovery was made by using data from the longest X-ray observation ever of M87, a nearby giant elliptical galaxy. M87 is centrally located in the Virgo cluster of galaxies and is known to harbour one of the Universe’s most massive black holes.
https://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2006/m87/
Kategorie: Kosmologie
Scientists Determine The Nature of Black Hole Jets
NASA and Italian scientists using Swift have for the first time determined what the particle jets streaming from black holes are made of. Black hole particle jets are commonly seen in quasars and other celestial objects, shooting off at nearly light speed. According to the Swift team, these jets appear to be made of protons and electrons, solving a mystery as old as the discovery of jets themselves in the 1970s. The jets observed by Swift contain about the mass of Jupiter if it were pulverized and blasted out into intergalactic space.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2006/swift_blazars.html
Survey of star explosions reveals key findings
Scientists using NASA’s Swift satellite have observed two dozen recent star explosions, called supernovae, quickly after the event and have discovered never-before-seen properties, some of which run counter to prevailing theories.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2006/supernova_mugshot.html
Stellar Vampires Unmasked
Astronomers have found possible proofs of stellar vampirism in the globular cluster 47 Tucanae. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), they found that some hot, bright, and apparently young stars in the cluster present less carbon and oxygen than the majority of their sisters. This indicates that these few stars likely formed by taking their material from another star.
Nearby Universe Mapped in 3 Dimensions
A new map developed by an international team of astronomers should help you find your way around the Universe – at least to a distance of 600 million light years. This new 3-dimensional map plots out the locations of all the major superclusters of galaxies and the voids that surround them. It includes „The Great Attractor“ and a supercluster called „Shapley“ that lies about 400 million light years away and spans 20 million light years. The map was developed using data from the 2MASS Redshift Survey, which calculated the redshifts (and therefore the distances) of 25.000 galaxies across the entire sky, and the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which provided the colours and two-dimensional positions of the galaxies.